Week 13 12/24/02

Phew, midterm exams are over. They are called finals, but they were only 10 percent of our grade, so they were really midterms. I have no idea how I’m going to study for 4 exams that are 90%-100% of my grade, and write a paper that is 85% of my grade next March. What a nightmare that will be. (Remember that last quarter I only had 3 classes that had finals. BLS was a paper. Next quarter I have all the same classes plus Property. Don’t expect to hear much from me in March.)

So, how were my exams you ask? Short answer: I don’t know. Long answer: At least alright, but the grading will be all about the curve and whether I figured out how to take law school exams. And I can’t predict those things at all. I can say with some certainty that I didn’t flop. That is for two reasons 1) the curve is pretty generous (most people get Bs) 2) I felt that I had a solid understanding of the stuff the questions were asking (but again, law school exams are supposed to be really weird, so I may have flopped, I just didn’t know it). I’ll let you know when I get them back. Apparently that could be a while, there is a rumor flying around that Schnapper (Civ Pro) didn’t give exams back until just before the final. We’ll see.

So my Contracts exam was first on Monday (16th, 1pm-3pm). I had my outline and notes all printed out in a binder. I actually used everything I had printed out, so the trees I killed did not give their lives totally in vain. There were 6 questions with about a page given to answer each. This is a bit different than your typical law school exam which is 1-3 long stories (or fact patterns) about which you list and discuss all the possible legal issues you can think of (issue spotting). Winn (my contracts professor) had given us a practice exam, which, we later learned, she had written at the same time as the exam. She told us on the exam that she had put all the hard questions on the practice exam, so she thought the real exam should be a bit easier. She was right. I think I did alright, but again, it’s hard to tell. I had an answer pretty quickly for each question, but I don’t know whether it was the right answer. One thing I should mention before I continue: one of our peer advisors recommended that we not discuss the exams with each other afterwards. This is because when you are standing with a few other people, you will hear the answers of a whole group of people, and of course you won’t have gotten all the issues that everyone in that given group got. So since you can’t change your answers anyway, why go home feeling inadequate and like you failed, since it probably isn’t true anyway. So we didn’t talk about the answers, and I’m sure it was good advice. Even if I didn’t do well, I don’t want to know about it until after I’ve enjoyed my break.

The Civ Pro exam was on Wednesday at the same time (1pm-3pm). This was a bit more traditional in that we had a fact pattern question. There were three questions to choose from. Two were fact patterns, one was a proposed bill changing the law that we were to discuss. I did not come across anyone who did the third question (proposed bill). Schnapper likes those, but they are harder because you have to come up with examples of how the law would change and then talk about why that’s good or bad. So, unlike fact patterns where you have the example, you just need to talk about the legal issues, in the proposed bill questions, you have to come up with your own examples, then talk about the policy behind the legal issues. Much harder. So most people did one of the two fact patterns. For these you basically write every legal issue you can think of. My hand hurt after 2 hours that’s for sure.

My Torts professor (Walsh) gave us a take home exam, due Friday at 12pmt. We could spend as much time on it as we wanted. It was to be 8 pages. I didn’t do anything with it until after the Civ Pro exam. I basically spent Thursday writing. The problem he gave us was interesting. It was about a ballerina who tore her ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) in her knee, then fell and landed on her back and was paralyzed because she had a “narrowing of the spine.” Her instructor had made her change shoes right before she hurt herself. Walsh gave us an article from the New Yorker (you may have seen it) about the controversy in the ballet world about ballet shoes. Apparently there is a new kind of shoe that is more comfortable than the old kind (which have been made in the same way for no less than 100 years) and is meant to reduce injuries. Well in Walsh’s fact pattern, the ballerina’s instructor had made her change to the old style of shoes, basically because she was against the new kind of shoes. So, we had to decide if our (hypothetical) firm should take the ballerina’s case on contingency, and if so who she would recover from. Though it’s kind of wacky, I argued that we should take the case and file a claim against the school and instructor for negligence. But don’t worry, I’m not going to be a tort lawyer, so you won’t have to hear about the crazy law suits I would bring. Anyway, even if he hates my answer, he said the exam would only be 10% of our grade if it helped us (i.e. if it was the same as or better than our final exam grade).

So, after we turned in our final exam (12pm), we all went to a bar and played darts, pool and shuffle board. I was so tired that it was really good to perk myself up. Then I went home and spent some quality time with Cedar while we killed things (played Halo on the xbox). The last few days I’ve been sleeping and trying to shop. Stupid shopping.

Yesterday I ate lunch with my professional mentor, Irene Hecht. I don’t think I’ve mentioned her before. Well the law school runs a mentoring program whereby lawyers out in the world mentor 1st year law students. My mentor is a partner at a medium sized law firm. She provides a view of the firm world which is a view I haven’t had at all coming from the environmental non-profit world. Anyway, she works very hard and doesn’t have kids or a husband. I think she is of the generation in which, to be a top lawyer, you couldn’t easily have a family too. Yesterday I met with her and another lawyer at her firm. He works on corporate law (not litigation), which is helping companies comply with the law as they go about their business. There are certainly some appealing things about corporate law: less crazy hours, varied legal problems. But still, the subject matter doesn’t sound like it fits me very well. Anyway, probably in my second summer I’ll try working for a firm to see what it’s like.

Now it’s Christmas Eve! I spent yesterday tearing my hair out while trying to shop and park. What a nightmare. Now I know why I ordered all the presents on-line last year.

This weekend we’ll probably go to our friend’s cabin on Bumping Lake. It is really pretty there, but I’ve only been in late summer. I’m sure all the snow is real pretty. Sometime this break I’m hoping to do some job search stuff too. Fun fun!

Merry Christmas to everyone, and I wish we were there to celebrate with you!

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